


A Verb in Perfect View

by twnkwlf



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Dimension, Everybody Lives, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-30 18:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18320402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twnkwlf/pseuds/twnkwlf
Summary: Impulse means following a feeling to its destination.





	A Verb in Perfect View

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fix for ep 6 and takes place in a dimension where Jesse doesn't fucking die
> 
> cw: i imply some past underage in this, but there's nothing explicit
> 
> also incapable of titling stories that aren't hozier lyrics lmao but movement is an oa bop if i've ever heard one

In another dimension, the wind on the beach is strong and violent. Steve is called awake by the shaking of the tent. Angie’s soft snores are loud in the dark and so is the howling, so are the waves. He unfurls himself from her grip and slips outside, sinking into the cold sand. It’s loud and freezing.  

In this dimension, Steve pisses into the ocean which is black, and angry, and alive.  When he turns around, tucking himself back into his jeans, he scans the tents all lined in a row.

He feels an impulse, but not the kind that the shrink used to talk about. _We need to work on Steve’s impulse control,_ she had said to his parents on more than one occasion. She even gave him a book where he was supposed to write down the things that motivated him in his day to day life. Somewhere on those pages was this bullshit mantra: _Stop, Think, Process, Act._

There are things you can’t process, though. Things you can’t write down. Steve knows this. Impulse means following a feeling to its destination. It means leaving your front door open.  It means standing in front of an assault rifle. It means moving.

Looking out at the tents, Steve feels a deep and dreadful stirring inside him, like a belly full of cold sand, so he follows it to its destination, which is Jesse’s tent.

It’s dark inside, but he’s still awake when Steve unzips the canvas.   

“Yo,” he says, trying to avoid kicking sand onto the floor.

Jesse blinks at him, like he’s slow to recognize Steve. That seems impossible given all the nights that their eyes have adjusted to each other in the dark. Sleepovers with both of them crammed inside Steve’s twin bed, or nights after parties that Jesse wasn’t invited to, when Steve would climb his drainpipe and knock on his bedroom window. Jesse always knew it was him, always let him in to sober up on the stained carpet, listening to Steve lie about girls he fingered in the hot tub or boys he beat up in the driveway.

“It’s late. You tired?” he asks.

Jesse just shrugs.

“I can’t sleep out here, dude,” he says, scratching an impossible spot in between his shoulders.

Jesse can’t sleep at all, so it feels like a moot point. Steve scoots in closer like he’s chasing warmth.

“You should go back to bed,” Jesse says. “I’m just gonna… “

He wants to let Jesse talk, but a memory bubbles to the surface like it’s been held under pressure, so he lies down on the pile of blankets next to where Jesse sits and lets it out.

“You remember, like, freshman year? That camping field trip shit they made us do for…fucking gym or something?”

“It was for Sports and Recreation,” Jesse says, barely above a whisper. “On the lake.”

“Yeah, that stupid class. And then I had to crash in your tent because fucking Dave shit in my sleeping bag.”

“He did it for …payback,” Jesse says slowly. “Because you ruined his fire.”

“He was an asshole.”

Steve remembers. He remembers that it took Dave two hours to make his campfire with flint and kindling. No one else in the class had been able to do it, and the fucker was so proud of it. Steve remembers the look on his face when he pissed all over it, but it had been on an impulse. Jesse’s mom had died four months earlier. It had been to make Jesse laugh.

Steve remembers. He slept in Jesse’s tent that night, hyper and full of freedom. It felt amazing to be out of Crestwood, away from his parents, and the vice principal, tucked inside a sleeping bag with Jesse. It felt amazing when Jesse laughed, when he threw his head back and nearly choked on his own spit. They carried on all night, playing Angry Birds on Steve’s phone with the brightness turned all the way down. Eventually the chaperone had to point her flashlight at their tent to get them to shut up.

Then later, with the sound of their classmates snoring around them, Steve’s proximity in the sleeping bag wasn’t funny anymore. It all happened quietly, fearfully, quickly. That was an impulse too.

In the morning, they buried their pyjamas at the bottom of their backpacks and didn’t sit next to each other on the bus. He was sure that Jesse would never talk to him again, so Steve punched the wall of his bathroom that week, cracking the tiles beside the mirror, causing him to lose all cell phone privileges.

But Jesse showed up at his house the following Friday with a bag of sour keys, a pillow, and the Dark Knight Rises on BluRay. It never happened again. Steve wouldn’t let it, so afraid that Jesse might disappear if it did.

He doesn’t know why he’s bringing it up now.

“Yeah, I remember.” Jesse turns to look down at Steve and he looks confused, eyebrows folding in to make a little ridge. Steve reaches up to smooth it with his thumb, like Jesse’s face is made of clay.

“I haven’t been camping since then,” Steve says.

“Me neither.”

Slowly, Jesse slides down to lie next to Steve and it’s so quiet, but so _loud_ with the sound of the ocean and Jesse’s breathing, laborious and shaky.

“Can you still feel it?” Jesse asks.

“Feel what?”

“The invisible river. What it felt like when…when OA jumped.”

Steve opens his eyes and looks at Jesse’s face, teary, a little swollen, and pale even in the dark. “Yeah,” he tells him because it’s true. It’s an echo of a feeling, something he can’t describe. It’s like soft water trickling, like water running down a drainpipe, like the rain running down Jesse’s drainpipe as Steve struggles to climb it, to reach Jesse’s window.

“I can’t feel anything,” Jesse says.

Steve watches a tear slide down into the musty pillow and he follows the feeling, leaning in close to press his forehead to Jesse’s. He can feel Jesse tremble, reverberating through his brain.

If there was a movement that could let him take Jesse’s sadness, Steve would break all his bones to get the motion right.

Jesse sighs with Steve, both of them pulling in the same air, and when they exhale, Steve presses his mouth against Jesse’s. For a moment, he thinks of Angie, sleeping only a few feet away, and he swallows the guilt because he knows this is how it has to be. He knows that if he explained it to her, she would get it, because Angie understands things, more than Steve, even. So he pushes forward and slowly tips Jesse’s head back, rolling on top of him.

Jesse is still for a few moments, and Steve almost pulls away, but then his hands slide up to Steve’s back and hold him with a pressure that pushes Steve closer, not away. Jesse comes alive for a moment, surging up to kiss Steve again, and again, and again, with big gulps of air in between. He’s not really practiced, has probably never kissed anyone before, but Steve guides him down slowly until they’re not so urgent.

He breaks away, looks at Jesse’s eyes shining up at him.

“You feel shit,” he says. “I know you do. The river needs you. You feel that, right?”

Jesse lets out a breath, not as turbulent as before. He kisses him again, softer this time, like he’s more sure of himself.

“Just…can you stay for a while?” Jesse asks.

Steve slowly slides back to lie beside him.

“Come here,” he says opening his arms so that Jesse can move his head over onto Steve’s shoulder. Jesse gives him half a smile, his hair flopping in his face. Steve brings up one arm and holds him there, and with the other, he pulls up the sleeping bag bunched at their feet until it covers both of them.

Jesse falls asleep fast, his mouth crushed against the skin of Steve’s neck. Steve closes his eyes and follows Jesse down into a dream.

 

/

 

In this dimension, when the light in the tent is tinted pale lavender as the sun starts to rise over that loud ocean, Jesse will wake up and feel rested for the first time in weeks. He’ll look down at his brother’s flushed face sleeping, and he’ll quietly leave the warm tent. In this dimension, Jesse buries the stolen pain medicine in a hole in the sand. Then he peels off his clothes. In this dimension, Jesse dives into the ocean and feels the rushing water race against his heart. It feels fast and strong, like a current.

In this dimension, Jesse doesn’t float. He swims.  

 


End file.
